Sir Hugh Orde said the UK would have to leave the European arrest warrant and negotiate justice and home affairs agreements with the other 27 EU member states if the country voted to quit in the referendum.
Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Fugitives across Europe will flock to the UK as a safe haven if it leaves the European Union because a series of laws and extradition agreements would be ripped up, the former head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) has said.

In one of the strongest warnings of the dangers of a UK exit, Sir Hugh Orde said criminals would know that it would take longer to extradite them if Britain were outside the EU.

He said: “If I was a villain somewhere else in Europe and I’m escaping justice, I am going to be here because it is going to take a lot longer to get me back.”

The former head of Acpo was speaking at the launch of the pro-EU Britain Stronger in Europe campaign led by the former M&S executive chairman Stuart Rose, who issued a strong warning of the economic impact of an exit. In an echo of the pro-euro Britain in Europe campaign launched in 1999, Lord Rose claimed that three million jobs would be put at risk if the UK quit the EU.

But Rose edited his speech to remove a claim, briefed overnight, that those who believed Britain should leave the EU were “quitters. Will Straw, the executive director of the in campaign, said it stood by the description but Rose had edited his speech on Monday morning.

Straw said: “He delivered the speech in his words. We believe that people who leave the EU are quitters. There was an original draft [of Rose’s speech] drafted by people at the campaign. He edited the speech this morning and delivered it in his own words.”

The pro-EU campaign has said it will paint a positive and optimistic picture of the arguments in favour of Britain’s EU membership. But Orde said leaving the EU would mean the UK not being party to the European arrest warrant and a series of other EU crime-fighting measures. Britain would have to renegotiate all the justice and home affairs agreements on a country-by-country basis with the other 27 EU member states.

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Orde said: “They are going to have to start from scratch and negotiate with 27 different countries. We lose joint investigation teams. So [investigations of] serious crimes will be impeded because there will be long and complicated legal processes to get the evidence and information we need.

“At the moment if they [fugitives] come here, we are very good at tracking them down, we use all the systems that the Europeans give us as well as our own. We bring them to justice and we send them back for a court in their own country to convict them under their rule of law.”

Rose is the main figurehead of the campaign. But sources said they hoped David Cameron, following a successful renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s EU membership, would be its main advocate.